Lost Generations | An Interview with Bishop Alexander Sample | by Jim Graves | Catholic World Report
Bishop Alexander Sample, 50, is celebrating the fifth anniversary of his ordination and installation as bishop of Marquette, on Michigan’s upper peninsula. At the time of his episcopal ordination, he was the youngest Catholic bishop in the US, and the first to be born in the 1960s.
Sample was born in Montana and grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and attended Catholic schools there. Although he had thought about a vocation to the priesthood while growing up, he initially decided to pursue a career in engineering.
His family moved to Michigan, where he attended college. “I immediately fell in love with the upper peninsula of Michigan,” he recalled. “I loved the beautiful country and the people.”
After earning his BS and MS degrees in engineering, Sample opted to go to seminary. “I was more prayerful than many of my peers,” he remarked. “That opened me up to the action of the Holy Spirit.”
He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Marquette in 1990, and filled a variety of diocesan positions, including serving simultaneously as pastor of three small parishes, before being ordained bishop of the diocese.
Marquette is a rural diocese; surrounded by three of the Great Lakes, much of it is wooded, and it is known for its cold winters. It has 50,000 Catholics, 94 parishes and missions, and 53 priests, many of whom must serve multiple parishes. Local industries include mining, lumber, and tourism, but much of the area is economically depressed, especially in the current recession.
Although a young bishop, Bishop Sample has been outspoken in his defense of Church teaching. In 2009, for example, he asked Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, retired auxiliary bishop of Detroit, not to speak in the Marquette diocese because of his dissenting views on such issues as homosexuality and the ordination of women. He also condemned the University of Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama, calling the move “unconscionable” and “completely out of step with the Catholic Church’s teaching.”
Bishop Sample recently spoke to CWR.
You’ve said that when you made the decision to enter the seminary and pursue ordination to the priesthood, you never doubted your vocation, but others close to you did.
Bishop Sample: I never doubted my call to the priesthood. From the time I decided to enter the seminary, I felt a great peace. There were those who opposed my decision, including my father and my college professors. And, since I was ordained a priest, I have loved and enjoyed my life ever since.
My father knew I had pondered the idea of a vocation, but wanted me to become an engineer. He was proud of me, as were my college professors, and he thought I’d put the idea of a vocation out of my head.
Also, I was his only son. My grandfather was Alexander I, my father Alexander II, and I was Alexander III. He wanted me to carry on the family legacy, and hoped there would be an Alexander IV.
When I announced my decision to him, he was unpleasantly surprised. He was cool to the idea. I had been living and studying at home, so we went through some rough months.
But he had a spiritual experience that led him to change his mind. He loved boats, and had one on Lake Superior. He was out boating, and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise. As he watched it, he realized that God had given him many good things in life. He had a good family, enjoyed financial success, and survived his first battle with cancer.
He realized that God had blessed him in many ways. He also realized that God was asking him, in return, to give him his only son as a priest. He returned from the trip and immediately called me down to the dock to talk to him. He shared his experience and said, “If this is what you believe God is calling you to do in your life, then I’m behind you 100 percent.”
Continue reading this interview at www.CatholicWorldReport.com...
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Posted by: Charles E Flynn | Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 07:03 AM
It's a beautiful story about his father reconciling himself to his son's vocation.
I felt a strong vocation to the priesthood when I was a young boy (subsequently abandoned, for better or for worse) and I still remember the look of consternation on my mother's face when I said I wanted to be a priest when I grew up. I really don't understand why parents so often have this reaction. My wife and I wish one of our children had a vocation.
Posted by: Dan | Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 08:37 AM
Bishop Sample is too young to remember a scene that many of us, ten years or so older than he, can remember vividly.
Circa 1963, Father X or Sister Y or Brother Z is a very devout and orthodox preacher or teacher. Over summer, Father X or Sister Y or Brother Z attend courses at the local Catholic college (or maybe even at Notre Dame, or some other "name" university).
In 1964, Father X or Sister Y or Brother Z return spewing acid scorn on all of the practices and most of the beliefs that they had promoted so devoutly just the year before (and for many years before that).
In 1965, Father X or Sister Y or Brother Z don't return at all. They have become Mr. A, Ms. B and Mr. C.
The next year, Bishop Sample started kindergarten.
I can testify that there literally is no exaggeration in this account of the early and middle 1960s. It was an astonishing, frightening and profoundly demoralizing environment to experience as a Catholic teenager. And though it wasn't true, it was said then without official contradiction (and for many years thereafter) that it was what Vatican II was actually after.
How was it that apostasy was able to make so much headway under the cloak of Vatican II? I am a hermeneutic of continuity true believer, but I think we need to strive for a better understanding of what went wrong with the presentation and reception of Vatican II, before we can repair the damage that has been done in that Council's name.
Posted by: Robert Miller | Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 05:42 PM
Dan - Just a little quibble, but all your children have vocations. Objectively speaking a vocation that imitates more closely our relationship with God in heaven is 'better' (ie - the celibate priesthood, see St. Paul's epistles). However, subjectively, each of your children have a particular vocation to follow, and only that vocation can bring them to the heavenly banquet.
Posted by: Kevin C. | Thursday, December 01, 2011 at 02:12 PM